Merkel’s Baltic Backyard Split Over $18 Billion Oil Rush. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s election district is perched on a sea of oil that was once top secret and now promises a 13.5 billion-euro ($17.7 billion) windfall for one of Germany’s poorest states, according to the company drilling test wells.
Central European Petroleum GmbH, a joint German-Canadian venture, has been granted eight concession licenses to explore for oil in more than 3.6 million acres near the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Merkel’s district is located, and in Brandenburg, where she owns a weekend home. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is among the project’s backers. The world honesty rankings are far from “honest” I’ll admit, I’m just as into ranking the world’s nations on various attributes as the next person.
So I might be the last person you’d expect to come forward with a plea for caution on these things. Several international papers and sites’ “most read” lists today had some version of the results from a recent Reader’s Digest test that aimed to find the world’s most-and-least-honest cities. The magazine determined this by “dropping” 192 wallets—each filled with $50, a cellphone number, and other items—in major cities around the world to see how many people would try to find the owner. The Finnish city of Helsinki was the most “honest,” with 11 out of 12 wallets returned. The world’s best scientists agree: On our current path, global warming is irreversible—and getting worse.
In a landmark report, a global panel of leading scientists again called the evidence for climate change “unequivocal” and for the first time said humans are “extremely likely” to be the dominant cause.
Put simply: “Human influence on the climate is clear.” And as this map makes clear, the world has already experienced warming of up to 2.5°C over nearly its entire surface since the start of the 20th century: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is convened by the United Nations to give periodic updates on the state of climate science as well as future projections and likely impacts. The group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their last update in 2007. What makes the IPCC so important is simple: They are required to agree. Here is the report’s side-by-side comparison of the best-case and worst-case scenarios for global climate change in the 21st century.
Korea’s plan to shred a jellyfish plague with robots could spawn millions more. Some jellyfish only become stronger after being attacked by robots.
Specifically, the jellyfish-shredding robots of the Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm, or JEROS, developed by researchers at the Korea Science Academy. In theory, using semi-autonomous robots to round up jellyfish in nets and shred thousands per hour is one of the few ways to eliminate these otherwise virtually unstoppable beasts, which earlier this week shut down a nuclear reactor in Sweden, which sounds exotic but is actually a fairly common problem. But turning some species of these creatures into jellyfish gazpacho could actually lead to more of them, notes jellyfish biologist Rebecca Helm. Jellyfish Invasion Paralyzes Swedish Reactor. Jellyfish Stings An Increasing Public Health Concern, Experts Say. Small translucent blobs dotted the Waikiki shoreline when Angel Yanagihara set out for a sunrise swim one early July morning in 1997.
"An old woman on the beach told me, 'Don't go in. Those are box jellyfish. They are dangerous,'" recalled Yanagihara, a biochemist at the University of Hawaii. "But I looked at them and thought that was silly. " Multiple box jellyfish stings landed her in an ambulance a short while later, and she admitted regretting her quick dismissal of the advice. Economics is making us greedier. This originally appeared on LinkedIn.
You can follow Adam Grant here. In 1776, Adam Smith famously wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Economists have run with this insight for hundreds of years, and some experts think they’ve run a bit too far. Premium Kopfhörer für Handys u. Mp3 Player. Pollution has damaged Chinese sperm so much that a black-market shot costs up to $4,900. China’s finally starting to reckon with the health consequences of decades of pollution. An official at the top economic planning agency just acknowledged pollution’s toll on people’s mental and physical health. But for many, that’s too little too late. Such as for China’s youngest lung cancer patient (link in Chinese), an 8 year old girl.
And for the 40 million people between 20 and 40—about 12.5% of that population—who have fertility problems. It’s also why Chinese men are increasingly shooting blanks (link in Chinese), says Dr. When environmental pollution is severe enough, it causes the sperm to become long and “ugly,” such that they can even stop swimming, says Li.